Saturday, April 29, 2017

Many of the creations which have graced these pages over the
past two years are the works of dedicated, professional puzzle makers. A few, on the other hand, have been the
product of passionate and often highly skilled hobbyists, who make a few copies
in their spare time when not doing their day jobs. The quality woodwork of some of these
“hobbyists” is simply astounding. One
elusive fellow whose work I had not had the pleasure of experiencing before is
Stephen Chin, the mild mannered dentist from Australia. He is prolific in his side hobby, and while
he only produces a few copies of each new creation, he has invented dozens of
designs over the years. He is particularly
well known for his skill with the lathe, with which he creates beautifully
turned tops, eggs, and spheres. He is
also known for his quirky and devilish sense of humor. For example, he once designed a puzzle called
“Ze house of mouse ze duong” – or simple, “Mouse House” which is a little house
with a mouse (or rat) inside. You have
to stick your finger into the mouse’s house to open the puzzle and release the
mouse, but when you do, the mouse bites you!
Quite literally – he has placed a trap inside. If that wasn’t bad enough, he has installed a
tiny electronic speaker inside which then activates and proceeds to laugh at
you. Somehow, Stephen still manages to
retain all of his friends. He even
encourages others along this – wait for it – “psycho-path”. Just see my review of Shane Hale’s “Viper”
puzzle, which was inspired by Mouse House, for such an example.

1 Pinko Ringo by Stephen Chin

As luck would have it, I recently got to enjoy a few of
Stephen Chin’s amazing pieces through a friend who is extremely generous with lending
out his precious puzzles. One of these was a
rare and radiant apple with very few copies in existence. As the saying goes, an apple a day keeps the
dentist away. Stephen Chin’s “1 Pinko
Ringo” (don’t ask me how he comes up with these names), is a lovely wooden
apple with an unusual flavor. It’s based
on the designer Wayne Daniel’s original icosahedron puzzles, in which a perfect
twenty sided polyhedron shape is composed of ten identical pieces, half of
which are mirror images of the other half.
As he likes to do, Chin converted that original design into a spherical
shape – in this case, an apple. Spin the
apple around a few times and watch out!
All ten pieces come flying apart and land in a jumble – oh no! Thankfully, due to the shape of the apple
motif, and the colorful exotic woods used in the puzzle, it is not as difficult
as it seems to decipher which pieces go with which others. The really hard part is determining how to
coordinate all ten pieces back into place so it all holds together again. Figure that out and you’ll be the teacher’s
pet. This is a wonderfully elegant,
beautifully crafted puzzle which showcases this master “hobbyist’s” remarkable
skill.

Ze Orange by Stephen Chin

Ah, but isn’t this a blog about puzzle boxes? Now we’ve been
over that and I’m allowed to digress from time to time. But since you mentioned it, here’s Stephen
Chin’s “Ze Orange”, a double compartment puzzle box full of masterful turns
(see what I did there?). This time the
fruits of his labor have yielded an orange, complete with a silver stem. It’s a lovely piece of art and would be
perfectly satisfying as an exceptionally skillful bit of wood turning,
complete with textured skin. But orange
you more curious than that? There are
many layers, and once you have peeled them back (I can’t help myself) you
discover two compartments inside, which contain equally lovely examples of his
lathe skills. As he often does, Stephen
has left a few handwritten notes inside this copy, indicating the orange
includes wood from his cypress tree.
There are objects to be found as well, which turn this puzzle into one
of discovery, and it’s unlikely these little treasures are simply there by
accident … Everything has its purpose and is extremely well thought out, right
down to the final tinny electronic chorus.
This puzzle provides some freshly squeezed fun and is good to the last
drop.

The Royal Smile circa 1930

Here’s a fitting toast to my colleague across the world, who
has made me smile with his marvelously whimsical creations (and to my friend
who was so generous to share them). I
imagine that the name of this old classic cocktail, “The Royal Smile”, will
resonate with Stephen Chin both professionally and personally. Based on another old classic, the “Jack
Rose”, which I have featured previously, the Royal Smile adds gin to the delicious
mix of apple brandy, lemon juice and grenadine.
These drinks were popular in the era surrounding Prohibition, and the
earliest recipe for the Royal Smile is found in the Savoy Cocktail Book by
Harry Craddock, 1930. Here I’ve
substituted the lemon juice for orange juice, so the cocktail has an apple and
an orange, just this once. Either way,
it will make you smile. Drink a few and
you might very well start to hear odd electronic noises emanating from your
glass, too. Cheers!

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Here at Boxes and Booze we seldom get boxed in, and
certainly not into a corner. Take a
standard cube, for example, with its six faces, eight vertices and twelve
edges. If we cut off all the corners, we
have an entirely different object – a cube octahedron or a vector equilibrium,
to name a few names. The inherent
“cube-ness” of the object remains, though, depending on how you slice it, and
the six “sides” that make up this cube take on their own interesting polyhedral
shapes. So it’s not much of a stretch (is
it?) to consider a perfect pentagonal
dodecahedron which is named “Pyramid”. What I mean is, consider the dodecahedron – a
polyhedron with twelve perfect pentagonal faces (and twenty vertices and thirty
edges). It would be possible, depending
on how you sliced it, to reveal the inherent “cube-ness” in such an
object. Just imagine an actual cube
sitting perfectly inside the docdecahedron.
Now separate each piece of the dodecahedron along the planes of the cube
faces. Slide one of the sections off
entirely and you will be holding a pyramid.

Pyramid Box by Hideaki Kawashima

The Pyramid Box by Hideaki Kawashima represents a full
circle of craft, creation, invention, reflection, and recreation by this
Karakuri Creation Group artist. His very
first puzzle box for the group was the “Regular dodecahedron box”, consisting
of six turning sides built in the shape of a dodecahedron, with a minimum of
six moves required to open. It took over
8 years and over thirty puzzle box designs for him to develop the skills and
insight to finally create the box he had originally envisioned. Pyramid box is that achievement, an homage to
his first box and a realization of his vision.
The mechanism for Pyramid is identical to his POD box, which takes its
name from the design on its surface plates.
This was so that no hint was given from the name itself. That concept is taken even further in the
Pyramid version, which does away with any visual clues on the puzzle itself as
well. Pyramid is elegant, brilliant,
extremely challenging and so easy to get lost in as you navigate the many moves
needed for it to open. It is a
masterwork of design, a worthy compliment to this artist’s achievements, and a
fitting tribute to his beginnings. You
might say it’s his apex. His
capstone. His pinnacle. Or the top of his pyramid.

Twelve pentagons ... or six pyramids?

From Kawashima’s
golden pyramid we head back in time to the second half of the nineteenth
century, when gold discovered in San Francisco created a mad rush to the west
coast in search of more. Panning was hard, dirty and dangerous work,
which called for a well-earned beverage at the end of a hot day (or at the
beginning, too, I’m sure). Everyone
headed to the legendary Bank Exchange bar, situated where the Transamerica
pyramid building now stands, for its world renowned Pisco Punch. Pisco, a type of funky clear brandy, had been
brought up from South America by Peruvian and Chilean prospectors, and found glory
in the tightly held, secret recipe for the punch made famous at the Bank
Exchange. The bar’s owners took the
recipe to their graves, but the bar manager eventually revealed it, and the
California Historical Society published it in 1973.

Pyramid Punch by Simon Difford

In Rudyard Kipling's 1889 epic From Sea
to Sea, he immortalized Pisco Punch as being "compounded of the
shavings of cherub's wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of
sunset and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters". Indeed.
The spirits writer Simon Difford, who started the very first spirits
trade journal, “CLASS” in the late 1990’s, created this variation of the
classic in 2006, which he called “Pyramid Punch” in reference to the site of
the former Bank Exchange bar where Pisco Punch was born. Here’s to striking gold, celebrating the
present with a nod to the past, and finding the peaks on the pyramid of
life. Cheers!

These pyramids pack a punch

Pyramid Punch by Simon Difford

2 oz pisco (BarSol Mosto Verde Italia)

1 oz elderflower liqueur (St. Germain)

2 oz fresh pressed pineapple juice

½ oz fresh grapefruit juice

2 cloves

Muddle cloves in a mixing tin. Shake together with all other
ingredients and ice to chill, strain into a tall glass. Pineapple garnish. Enjoy with a mouth guard if you can’t take a
punch.

Saturday, April 15, 2017

This is not a typical box and booze review. I should actually say that this is knot. First of all, I’m going to take us back in
history to the ancient Greeks and the time of Alexander the Great. Second of all, I’m going to cut through all
that nonsense with a mighty stroke of the pen.
Just go with it, it will all make sense in a moment.

Gordian Knot by Robert Yarger and Rick Jenkins

The legend of the Gordian Knot dates back to ancient
Macedonia, when a prophecy telling of a man driving an oxcart into the capital city
of Phrygia came true and Gordia became king.
His son, Midas (a touchy fellow), offered the famed oxcart to the god
Zeus in gratitude and secured it in the town square with an intricate,
complicated knot which could never be untied.
The rope was made from Cornel bark of the Cornelian cherry tree, a
flowering species of dogwood which produces little red fruits. In 333 B.C., Alexander of Macedonia, the
great conqueror of ancient Greece, entered the city of Gordium and learned of
the prophesy that whoever could unravel the knot was destined to rule all of
Asia. Truth be told, he could not untie
it, but he had better idea. The
“Alexandrian Solution” ensued, whereby he cleaved the great knot in two with a
swift stroke of his sword.

Beautiful interwoven strands of exotic wood

Fast forward two thousand plus years and we have the “Yarger
Solution”, which definitely frowns upon the use of any sharp object to untie
this knot. The Gordian Knot is Number 22
in the Stickman puzzlebox series, and like its legendary ancestor, has cords of
wood which wrap around the box in an intricately interwoven pattern. The inspiration for this box came from the
idea of making a sliding tile puzzle which literally wrapped itself all around
the sides of a box and was not merely limited to a single flat surface. Add to that the interlocking nature of these
130 intertwined pieces, crafted from leftover bits of exotic wood from prior
puzzle boxes, and you have the visually stunning and deceptively difficult
Gordian Knot puzzlebox. There are a
minimum of 36 steps to discover along the way, including a few pieces which are
released completely from the box as it untangles itself. Most moves are quite difficult to determine
and may be found on another side of the box entirely from the move prior. Some moves are incredibly well disguised due
to the shape of the piece, or the solver’s (misguided) expectations. Eventually,
if you are as wise as Alexander, a keyhole will be revealed. Ah, but where is the key? It’s likely that
you have it already, waiting to be reconfigured from the pieces you have
removed off of the box. The finale of
this box, which is a true joy to solve up to this point already, is absolutely
outstanding. The Gordian Knot is one of the most satisfying puzzle boxes I have
experienced and is easily one of my all time favorites from Robert Yarger.

The Alexandrian Solution

For such a special box I have an equally special toast which
also hearkens back to ancient days. The
cornelian cherry tree, whose bark was used to make the original Gordian Knot,
produces little red berries as mentioned.
The flavor of this fruit has been described as a cross between cranberry
and sour cherry. Of course, there is a
long history of using this fruit in the making of various regional liqueurs and
spirits in parts of the Middle East and Europe.
For example, “kornelkirsch” is found in the Austrian and German
Alps. Since it’s not readily available
in the US, I created my own cornel berry kirsch by infusing cranberry liqueur
with sour amarena cherries. Mmmmmm. Not
content with just the delicious liqueur, I created a variation of a classic
cocktail called “The Last Word”. The
history of this pre-prohibition era drink places it as early as 1916, where it
was featured for 35 cents as the most expensive cocktail on the menu at the
Detroit Athletic Club. The Last Word is
a perfectly balanced cocktail using equal portions of gin, green
Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and lime
juice. There are literally hundreds of
variations using this basic template, although not all are as perfect. I love the combination of smoky mezcal with
cherries, so in my version, “The Alexandrian Solution”, mezcal meets cornel
kirsch and the rest is history. Cheers!

It's the Last Word in Macedonian Cocktails ...

The Alexandrian Solution

¾ oz mezcal

¾ oz sour cherry infused cranberry liqueur

¾ oz green Chartreuse

¾ oz fresh lime juice

Shake together over ice and strain into a favorite
glass. Commence dispensing with complex
problems brilliantly.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

It’s sakura (cherry blossom) season and the lovely pink
blossoms are resplendent across Japan and in Washington DC here in the US. The blossoms call to mind the beauty and
magic in the world, as does this charming puzzle box from Yoh Kakuda of the Karakuri
Creation Group. Kakuda is known for
creating whimsical and nostalgic pieces which take the form of animals and
evoke an emotional sentimentality. “POH”
is a giant tortoise with a prominent shell and a bemused expression. Kakuda has created a few versions of POH,
including this one with a striking yosegi checkered pattern on the shell
created by yosegi artist Yuta Shimizu.
The details are lovely, including the colorful checkered shell and the
green hued wood used for POH’s body. There’s
a lot more to POH than meets the eye. There are a few nice tricks which are required to open the shell, but the story of Poh is the
most interesting of all.

POH by Yoh Kakuda

The Japanese novelist Shinji Ishii published his first book, Once Upon a Swing, in 2000. In
that novel, there is another story, written by one of the main characters when
he was four years old. This story in a story is called “Typhoon”, and is about a fisherman who braves a storm,
only to survive and live alone after his entire village is wiped out. It’s fatalistic and alarming, and surreal as
part of the larger story. It’s hard to
believe it was written by a four year old child, but this is a fictional story, after
all. Amazingly, it actually was written, exactly as published, by Shinji Ishii when he was four years
old. He has been writing this way since
he could write. His style has been
described as “Gabriel García Márquez and a splash [of] John Irving and Roald
Dahl under the direction of Tim Burton”.1

What lessons have you learned, Poh?

In addition to the fable-like quality and emotional sweep of
his novels, Ishii tries to remove time from his stories, so that someone living
hundreds of years from now, or hundreds of years in the past, could understand
and enjoy them equally. “The Story of Po”
(Po No Hanashi) was published in 2005 and is set in an unnamed town in an unnamed
land. One day, one of the “eel-women”
who work along the river bank collecting eels from the river, notices
something lumpy in the water. She
pulls it out and realizes it is connected to her by a cord – she has just given
birth to it! Doves take flight shouting
“Peauuuuux! Peauuuuux!” and all the eel-women name the baby “Poh”. The story follows Poh on his life
journey. He initially learns lessons of
guilt, atonement, right and wrong in the little village, and is then swept down
the river by a flood. He lands in a
fishing village and befriends a kind man named “Doggone Old” who cares for a
sick grandchild and has a dog named “Child”.
Here, Poh learns the meaning of life.
The novel traces the life themes of love and loss, and of correcting the
mistakes we make along the way.

Doggone Old Fashioned

Hopefully this brief glimpse into the world of Shinji Ishii
and the Story of Po has given you new insight into this lovely, evocative piece
by Yoh Kakuda, and into the stories which inspire Kakuda’s charming works of
art. To continue the theme I’ve paired
POH with a special Japanese themed twist on the classic Old Fashioned
cocktail. The Old Fashioned is
essentially the original cocktail, an American invention from the early 1800’s.
The first description appeared in an 1806 newspaper describing a “cocktail” as
a combination of spirits, bitters, water and sugar. It was finally referred to as the “Old
Fashioned” in 1881 at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Nowadays, a proper “classic” Old Fashioned has
bourbon, ice, and a bitters soaked sugar cube, just like the original.

Doggone it, this is delicious

For the “Doggone Old Fashioned”, this special Japanese
themed version named after another character from the Story of Po, I’ve used an
exquisite Japanese whisky, the Yamazaki Distiller’s Reserve. The Yamazaki was named best whisky in the
world in 2015. For the sugar I created a special Umeshu Plum Wine syrup which
is incredibly delicious. The bitters are
replaced with cherry blossom oil essence, aromatized across the top of the
glass. One sip and you’ll be transported directly to Tokyo. Here’s to the timeless beauty of life and all its lessons. Kampai!

A timeless pair

Doggone Old Fashioned

2 oz Yamazaki whisky

¼ oz umeshu plum wine syrup

Cherry blossom essence

In a mixing glass, stir the whiskey and syrup with ice.
Strain into an old fashioned glass with a large cube. Spray the cherry blossom
oil over the drink or add a few drops directly.
Enjoy while contemplating the meaning of life.

Special thanks to Hideaki Kawashima who helped me track down
the Story of Poh.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Happy April, everyone! I can’t believe it has been a year
already since I foolishly dabbled in the twisty arts and mentioned I was
changing the name of this blog to “Twisties and Tonics”. That was a fun pairing, Oskar’s Treasure
chest (puzzle box hiding inside a Rubik’s Cube) with an “apple martini” which
was actually nothing of the sort. I’m
all through with fooling around now. This year’s pairing of potion and puzzle
is strictly professional. Promise.

Roll Box by Fumio Tsuburai

I’d actually like to talk about an original Karakuri
Creation Group craftsman with a long history in the group, whose work I have
never featured before. Fumio Tsuburai
has been crafting his unusual boxes since the start of the group back in 2000
and has 35 pieces in his portfolio. He
mentions that he has worked in electronics, machinery and painting as well as
woodcraft, and brings those skills to his creations. He also tries to balance his ability to
incorporate “high tech” in his puzzles with the understanding that “low tech”
may be more calming to the soul.

Lovely contrasting wood details

This
balance can be seen in one of his earlier puzzles, the “Roll Box”. At first glance, it appears to be a
handsomely made chest with a wooden-hinged lid, locked shut at the front. There is a prominent bar on the front
decorated in a contrasting, directional wood pattern which seems to be telling
you something. Indeed this is a sliding
bar with a little keyhole. Next you quickly realize that something is rolling around inside the box – a ball of some sort - and now the name of the box makes sense. There is a calm, almost
meditative sense which overtakes you as you gently roll the ball back and
forth. Of course, none of this rolling seems to make
the lid open. Don't let that frustrate you - I say just roll with it.

Meditate on the soothing sounds of the Roll Box

I’d also like to roll back in history for the potion to pair
with this puzzle. The weather is getting
warmer, especially in Houston, and one of the all-time classic beat the heat
cocktails is the Gin Rickey. Often
thought of as the official drink of Washington DC, the Rickey recalls a time in
American politics when disputes and deals were settled at the bar, and no issue
was so partisan it couldn’t be resolved over a few friendly drinks and a
handshake. To cool things off both
figuratively and literally, a base spirit such as bourbon or gin was often
diluted in an ice cold tall glass filled with seltzer – a classic “highball”.

The Gin Rickey c. 1883

“Colonel”
Joe Rickey was a well known lobbyist and campaign strategist in the late
1800’s. His favorite watering hole and
the place to politic was Shoomaker’s bar next to the National Theater. It was there at “Shoo’s” that Rickey invented
his famous drink, in 1883, with rye whiskey, lime juice and soda, although soon
after the drink became more famous with gin.
Rickey even went on to buy Shoomaker's bar in the 1890s, which has since been
demolished. The drink stands the test of
time as a refreshing, cool gin and tonic alternative for those sweltering days
in the swamp. Perhaps Washington should order a few now – seems everyone could
use a drink. Here’s to the Rickey,
rolling up our sleeves, and having a good old fashioned sense of humor. Cheers!

"Dry Rye" gin captures the original flavors quite well

Gin Rickey circa 1883

2 oz London Dry gin (I used St. George’s Dry Rye gin to
capture the spirit of the original as well)

¾ oz fresh lime

Soda water

Combine the gin and lime juice in an ice filled highball
glass. Add the soda water and stir.
Garnish with a wedge of lime and let the good times roll.